Various processing systems are used in the fabrication of magnetic recording disks. One such processing system is the Intevac MDP-250B disk sputtering system, available from Intevac, Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. The Intevac MDP-250B disk sputtering system is a production disk coating system designed to automatically sputter thin films of magnetic material and supplementary materials onto disks for magnetic information storage.
The Intevac MDP-250B disk sputtering system has 12 isolated process chambers, as illustrated in FIG. 1. The first process chamber is typically an infrared heater station that has quartz lamps positioned on each side of a disk. The remaining 11 process chambers are thin film deposition chambers or a combination of thin film deposition chambers and special purpose stations. The special purpose stations that may be selected are DC etch stations for cleaning disks, heating stations, and cooling stations to provide temperature control for optimum coating conditions.